Susperia claim to be a Norwegian black metal that now plays melodic thrash metal. Most of the members of this band have been involved with some fairly big projects as session players. As a band they have spent the last 18 years playing some fairly standard commercial metal in the hope of actually breaking out in the way of Dimmu Borgir and Nightwish. But as either metal or a pop album, The Lyricist fails miserably.(more…)

Death looms over thrash metal’s most sinister (and probably most influential) band: Slayer. After 35 years of touring and recording, the demise of the band’s most valuable member Jeff Hanneman, and age coupled with 25 years of creative rut, Slayer is about to expire. The band announced via a short video that it’s time for one last ride before a long overdue end.

Hellhammer is the ultimate symbol of what black metal should be about: a free exploration of dark phrasal music at the hands of a twisted mind. Typically it was not only the chromatic movements between sections which defined the music of Hellhammer but the linking between them, whose effect was great because individual sections were in fact proper tonal areas. It was their sensible juxtaposition, which gave the music its unique flavor. Furthermore, the maniac howling of Tom G. Warrior added the final touches of a music that was to set the example for an enactment that resembled an entrancing ritual more than it did a simple, mundane hedonism and biker metal, which had been the rule until that point.

I have no way of knowing if anyone will read this letter. It joins the others which have been hidden in the knot-hole of the ancient tree on top of the mountain that locals simply call “the big one,” to which I make a daily pilgrimage. My life has become oriented around what I can only describe as a portal to the future.

Dennis Emmental hated being late because it revealed to everyone how little he wanted to be there. Slipping past the creaky back door, he took his place in the line at OptiFood. Orders came from the digital kiosk at the drive-thru and Dennis had twenty-four seconds to assemble the ingredients for the OptiMeal:

He and his cohorts were dumping ingredients in the short, stout, beaker-shaped commemorative plastic buckets used to serve the twenty-four ounce meals. The store was open twenty-four hours a day, and had a thirty-eight percent turnover rate at a six month interval. The owners were unconcerned; they had reached the point where it took a million bucks just to think about suing them, and everyone knew that most of their employees were retards and flakes and so just laughed off their complaints.

When riding the subway in a major American city one is likely to encounter a homeless person panhandling for money. There is usually a canned speech of sorts that may or may not sound something like this:

“Hi my name is Daniel. I am homeless. I lost my job, I am cold, and I am hungry with no food to eat. Please donate whatever you can so I can eat. God bless.”

When I see musicians and journalists advertising Kickstarter, Patreon, and other fundrasing campaigns I hear the same speech in my head. This speech sounds something along the lines of:

“Hi my name is Daniel. I am a musician. I have no job, I am cold, and I am unmedicated with no Starbucks Frappacino to drink. Please donate money so I can record a blatantly mediocre album that I will also charge you for. I will hate you if you do not give me this money.”

As previously pointed out by the editor of this site, metal demo recordings does not exist as crass commercial propositions with the sole purpose of advertising the market viability of the artist, but function — at least ideally — as independent works produced and distributed without further infringement from the recording industry. In spite of eventual shortcomings resulting from lack of budget, experience, and time, demo-level recordings remain a breath of fresh air because they oftentimes capture bands at a nascent and untempered creative stage.

Wolf’s Lair Abyss was the first new proposition by the remaining Mayhem line up after De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, and all the personal drama and loss that it signified. Needless to say, the pressure upon the band on the musical level- especially of music as a dark art, as Euronymous would have it- was quite high. Expectations after an Immortal album of far and wide reach were not at all encouraging. The remainder of the band had to find a way in which they could work from the solid basis of the past towards a unique development that did not come off as an insult or a betrayal to all that had been accomplished. The solution found by the band here was almost perfect, but it ultimately was only a transition whose eventual development would show if the full potential for growth would be adeptly exploited. Still, there is much to be said about the unique identity of this brief but memorable foray into chaos.